Thinking Aloud: “The Great Arab Conquests”

I recently finished The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In by British professor and historian Hugh Kennedy. It’s a quite readable account of the first century of Arab conquests, during which Arab armies conquered a space from northern Spain to southern Pakistan.

The Great Arab Conquests supplies a blow-by-blow account of the Arab campaigns. Rather than proceeding chronologically, Kennedy chooses to break out his chapters by region. Of course, chronology is respected—it would have been hard for the Muslims to conquer North Africa without going through Egypt first, for example—but Kennedy’s framework makes it much easier for the reader to keep track of things.

According to Kennedy, who relies mainly on the accounts of the conquests left by both Arabs and non-Arabs, the remarkable speed and breadth of the Arab conquests are due to a variety of interlocking…

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About Nel Fahro-Rozi

I’m an avid reader, prolific wordsmith, cat lover, and passionate foodie and traveler. When I’m not in a world of my own with any of the above, I am an entrepreneur, communicator and writer.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2014 at 6:33 pm and posted in Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.